Doha, Qatar – In a cramped room in an evacuee compound, a music conductor without a baton instructs students familiarising themselves with instruments that are not their own. The conductor demands silence from spectators bobbing their heads in and out of the room.
The group has not practised together in nearly three months, not since their school’s doors in Kabul were closed when the Taliban overtook the Afghan government. Although their musical careers back home are in limbo, they have a chance to display their talents once again, and plan to put on a show.
Thousands of people have been forced from their homes and land by Taliban officials in the north and south of Afghanistan, in what amounted to collective punishment, illegal under international law, Human Rights Watch has warned.
Many of the evictions targeted members of the Shia Hazara community, while others were of people connected to the former Afghan government. Land and homes seized this way have often been redistributed to Taliban supporters, HRW said.
KABUL, Oct 20 (Reuters) – Former Taliban fighter Mohammad Ishaq, who spent years battling Western troops and local forces in Afghanistan, lost his leg in combat and is now learning to walk with a new limb. Standing near him at a Kabul clinic is one of the soldiers he defeated.
In the Red Cross Hospital in Kabul, Ishaq spoke simply of the eight years he spent in Helmand, the southern province where some of the fiercest fighting of the war took place and where thousands of civilians and combatants were killed and maimed.
Shayasta Wardak, a graduate of Kabul University’s sharia law faculty, spent years working as a judge in a Kabul district court, adjudicating disputes over marital splits, property and child custody.
But after the Taliban took over the Afghan capital in August, Wardak and her female colleagues were told their services were not required. When the women — who had tried to return to work in a group a few days after the takeover — demanded to know why, the young Taliban blocking their entry to the courthouse scoffed.
Russia has hosted the most high-profile international talks on Afghanistan since the Taliban took power, calling for an injection of aid to help the crippled economy but also demanding a more inclusive government.
Senior Russian diplomats made clear that formal recognition of the Taliban regime was not on the table until it does more to improve human rights and broadens an all-male cabinet, most of them clerics from the Pashtun ethnic group.
WASHINGTON — Zalmay Khalilzad, the top U.S. envoy to Afghanistan, is stepping down from his long-standing role following the Western military pullout from that war-ravaged country, the State Department said.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken on October 18 said Khalilzad, who led U.S. negotiators in talks with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, prior to the Islamist group’s takeover of Afghanistan, was leaving his positionand that his deputy, Thomas West, would take over.
44% of Afghan refugees housed temporarily at eight US military bases are children, according to a letter from Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to Sen. James Inhofe, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
34% of the refugee population at the bases are adult men, and 22% are adult women, the letter which is dated October 8 states.
One of the largest evacuation flights departed Kabul on Sunday with an unknown number of Americans on board and is on its way to Doha, a senior Qatari government official tells CNN.
The ninth evacuation flight from Afghanistan since August 31 is carrying 353 evacuees, including faculty, staff, and students from the American University of Afghanistan, as well as citizens from Afghanistan, the United States, the Netherlands, Denmark and Australia, among others, according to the official.
The US government has offered financial compensation to the relatives of 10 people mistakenly killed by the American military in a drone strike on the Afghan capital, Kabul, in August.
An aid worker and nine members of his family, including seven children, died in the strike.
